Welcome to Gaia! ::

|Trapped in your own frequency|


At first I felt bad going on Gaia instead of using my class time to research for my paper, but then I thought,"Hey why don't I get these guys to give me some in put!" and then other me was like "Yeah!" and negative me was like, "You're gonna fail..." and it goes on like that for a while...

ANYWAYS, I just wanted to know what you guys and gals feel about Internet Anonymity and weather or not it should be reduced. Who knows I might just quote you in my paper as a source... actually I just might cause I need at least one interview source, and goodness knows the people on Reddit or Meme data base can be ruder (ruder: real word? Google check didn't correct me so I guess it is) and we ALL know that no one is more informative than the Gaia community.

But in all seriousness, I'd like to know where you stand on the subject. Just so you know I'm kind of Half and Half but enough about me, where do you stand?

|Trapped in your own frequency|

Ruder or more rude would work, either way, though I think the latter is more common. Now with the language question out of the way...

I prefer having Internet anonymity, but that's because I keep my online life and offline life separate. I could count on my hands the number of people who've known me by both Ysavvryl and *real life name*. One hand if you count the number who'd remember it for very long. It's mostly a matter of interests and what I talk to people about.

One argument against anonymity is the lack of proper unspoken communication. When you've got someone face to face, it's easy to tell by their tone, posture, expression, and mood what they really mean to convey, no matter what the words they say are. In simpler terms, when someone says, "That's great," you can quickly tell if they actually mean 'that's great' or if they mean 'are you kidding me?', 'that's a bummer', or any other number of things.

On the internet, you've only got text, emoticons, and side notes to tell what a person's mood is. That quickly leads to misunderstandings, overreactions, flame wars that neither side wanted to start, and sometimes another user feeling hurt. I tend to use side notes myself *being philosophical about it*.

And then there's the whole matter of trolling. Since users can't see each other in forums, it feels easier to get away with being rude, obnoxious, or what have you. Having some anonymity removed would help curb those behaviors, as the person would feel conscious about being seen as bad.

Although I think education and a different way of viewing things could also help improve internet culture. As an example, I view my posts as being how other people are influenced to think about me. Knowing that someone out there is going to read it and form an opinion of me primarily based on those words makes me conscious to be careful about what I post. In fact, I changed my sig at one point to say something funny about critiques, but then thought, 'I offer critiques and advice a lot, and that might look bad,' so I switched it to something else.

Another thing this subject makes me think on is a study about a bagel company. They would deliver a tray of bagels to an office for workers to buy, but only left a box to put payments in. They found out that when a poster with eyes was placed near the bagel tray, they were paid more often then when the poster wasn't there. Knowing that one is being watched, even just by eyes on a poster, can improve human behavior. I read that in a book called Freakonomics; there's two and I don't remember which book it was in, but they're both really good reads.

Oh yeah, and I'm well known for lengthy posts! Hope I didn't bore you.

I'm too tired to make it make sense...tomorrow tomorrow.

That's it...I'm gonna respond to the others first...

First, I think that companies checking places like facebook isn't a good reason to reject someone or fire them...unless maybe they had two good candidates and need to find something that sets them apart or if the person was stupid enough to post a mean status about the company they work at. After all, companies don't want people working for them that won't fit into their ideal. I also think that it's the persons fault if they didn't set their account to friends only or something like that. Granted, I heard there are companies that well just go around that...but I think that's wrong and they should respect the persons privacy. Also, checking on facebook is almost like going to their neighborhood and walking around to see how the person gets along with others. That's a bit creepy. In short, I think it's okay to check up on an employee/potential roommate/etc if you really need to for some reason...as long as you aren't hacking into their information.

As for the verbal/emotional abuse to others...I disagree in a way. I don't think that's about it being easier to be mean. The Internet allows people to be true to who they are a lot easier. It's probably because you don't have to conform to societies standards. Thus, people are more likely to speak their mind or go around trolling others or showing off their artwork or whatever. I don't know why people keep focusing on the bad part. Maybe it's because they think that humans are generally good and wouldn't really want to be rude to others. But that isn't the case. They may seem more mean online because they are just being true to who they are and aren't as afraid to do that since they don't have parents to punish them or whatever the case may be. With that said, I won't deny the fact that someone dangerous can pretend to be someone their not a lot easier online in order to lure a victim. But we just have to learn how to be smart just like we had to when walking to a friends house when there were no computers.

So, I agree that people need to be educated a bit better about safety and then they can handle it how they want.

Oh yea...almost forgot...
I don't think it's harder to communicate online. Instead, I think there are good and bad things about it...just like there is with communicating offline. I've been surprised with how I knew someone was mad even though what he or she wrote seemed normal. That might be me just being weird, but still. There are a ton of different ways to communicate online that might help. Also, you are almost forced to cool down before you even get into a conversation about something that upset you...in some cases. Also, sometimes body language can be deceiving. I think it's just a different way to communicate and yet another thing we must learn how to do effectively.

Lol, no I wasn't bored at all, actually, I was really glad someone gave me some kind of lenghty feedback. It'll make one hell of a citation though but nopethe less great response.





Haha, I get what you're saying what you're saying, waht you're thinking of is "Disassociative Personality Syndrome", basically if you give something a "face" ex. an avatar, you are more likely to take that person's feelings into consideration.


Awesome. You pretty much wrapped up my paper in a couple of paragraphs. Yes, it is partialy psychological, although acording to some of the journals I read it's still being debated if interaction online can contribute to mental instability. But if you ask me the internet and "real-life" are slowly becoming synonymous and soon there will be no such thing as an anoynmous internet socialism, hence, facebook.

This is so sweet, you all have pretty much given me a whole page for my paper as far as quotes go (way more helpful than SOME people on Reddit or 4chan...)

Oh and sorry for any misspellings etc. I'm doing this from my 3d animation class, and gosh darnit, we don't have Google chrome on these computers.... 3dsmax... but no -bleepin- Google Chrome >.<

You're welcome! I'm interested in Internet behaviors and socialization too, but more from a linguistics standpoint. Like how emoticons and other things replace unspoken language online.

Maybe you got lengthy quotes because it is a literate RP guild, haha. We're used to long posts.

I||Happy Halloween, remember it's trick OR treat...||I

Just wanted to keep everyone updated on the paper topic.
Well it's going okay as of now, hit a snag here or there but nothing critical. It's mostly just a collection of notes, outlines, doodles(cause lets face it, people get bored) and pizza stains, or at least I hope it's pizza, anyways, my instructor is not too sure on me using some of the quotes and interviews I acquired though...

Instructor: These are pretty good, where did you get them?
Me: 4chan.
Instructor: :U what now...
Me: Trust me, only the "good" parts.

And, that's when I showed her the site. Eh, just, well I'm going to need to find another source for my biased interviews. Pfft. Good luck she says....

Could this help at all?:
http://www.cracked.com/article_17522_6-new-personality-disorders-caused-by-internet.html

It's about the way people behave on the internet and why. If not, then maybe it will at least be entertaining?